I daydream about winning the lottery and being a benefactor of my home town. Opening a few shops, employing locals, and, honestly, taking a loss on their operation. Would that help? To have a downtown with businesses that lost money? How long would it take for those businesses to generate enough street traffic that other businesses could open that actually made money? Or better to buy up the downtown and have businesses that don't pay much rent?

It's a pleasant daydream.

Anonymous wrote:I'm from Johnstown PA and feel that way from afar. Tons of natural beauty in the area. Then I go there and realize I don't want to make my kids grow up without the diversity they have now, especially since we are POC. I read what some of my former friends write on social media and feel like the crappy economy matches their crappy belief systems.

My boss is from the Johnstown/Altoona area and always talks about how absolutely decimated the community is now. No industry, no jobs, no money, no hope.

I'm from Johnstown PA and feel that way from afar. Tons of natural beauty in the area. Then I go there and realize I don't want to make my kids grow up without the diversity they have now, especially since we are POC. I read what some of my former friends write on social media and feel like the crappy economy matches their crappy belief systems.

Scranton?

There was such charm there for a long time, long ago it was thriving and had a wonderful community.

Politicians were robbing the city for years. Now they are so far behind, is it possible for them to improve?

Their taxes (property) in the city are higher than mine in NoVA.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Will you also give millions to improve schools? Incentivize local people to start small businesses and help create jobs? What is your plan for the displaced people?

I want to displace the local population (before anyone comes at me the locale is 80%+ white).

NP. But where would they go? How would they still benefit from the communities they have created?

What are the water issues like there? My hometown has infrastructure issues I don't know how they'll ever overcome. No one is moving there with their brown water.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Will you also give millions to improve schools? Incentivize local people to start small businesses and help create jobs? What is your plan for the displaced people?

I want to displace the local population (before anyone comes at me the locale is 80%+ white).

In a lot of these Rust Belt towns, they desperately need displacement in the form of young people moving in to work and have kids and revitalize. In my DH's home town, the average age of homeowners there must be in their 70s. They are going to have to close down local schools and consolidate because of under enrollment, and people are freaking out about it. But they've already laid off a bunch of teachers and they can't maintain the facilities because they don't have the money.

To some extent I do blame the people who live there because for 40 years every time anyone has tried to do something to change the town or improve it, a huge contingent of the old timers get mad and refuse. There was a massive opposition a few years back to putting in a traffic light in the downtown area. And then these people wonder why their kids all move far away (they couldn't stay if they wanted to) and why there are no good jobs in town and everything seems so depressing.

Cities and towns are like living things. You're either growing or you're dying. People who get nostalgic and want them to stay the same forever are not doing themselves any favor. Change is inevitable.

I feel this way about my DH's Pennsylvania hometown. Absolutely surrounded by natural beauty, full of charming homes, and economy has been declining since like 1975. I am from a small town in another state that is a similar size and has a thriving tourist economy that employs tons of people and generates lots of tax revenue for schools, new roads, parks, etc. I've said many times that we should buy up a bunch of houses or even an old hotel or something and start a little resort/retreat there -- open a small restaurant serving great food (there are like two regular restaurants in his hometown which are mediocre at best plus fast food and an Applebees), offer affordable but good quality lodging, and then do hiking and nature tours, guided kayaking and canoeing on the rivers, bird watching, etc. I know so many people in DC and other places who would to for something like that, spend plenty of money there, and also be reasonably good tourists. It could lead to support for small businesses in their downtown area, which is currently really depressed, and more jobs available for kids who grow up there and currently really have no good options for employment locally beyond some pretty unpleasant industrial jobs.

It's a pipe dream, we'll never do it because it doesn't make sense for us in our lives, but I think about it whenever I am there. It has so much to offer but instead people are just leading lives of quiet desperation. It could be so great.

Sadly there are a ton of communities in rural/flyover country that time has forgotten. The US is very much a tale of two cities ATP: incredibly wealthy urban areas and devastatingly poor areas that make up most of the land mass.

I guess globalization has been good for business but it sure hasn’t been good for our society.

Anonymous wrote:Will you also give millions to improve schools? Incentivize local people to start small businesses and help create jobs? What is your plan for the displaced people?

I want to displace the local population (before anyone comes at me the locale is 80%+ white).

Anonymous wrote:Will you also give millions to improve schools? Incentivize local people to start small businesses and help create jobs? What is your plan for the displaced people?

My hometown is so depressed that there is no displacement involved in my scenario. Improve housing/resources for the poor. Stimulate local businesses. A rising tide that lifts everyone. Yes, I know this is a rosy scenario.

I hear you. I'm from a depressed town and I spend a lot of time daydreaming about this.

Not even necessarily gentrification in the damaging sense, just introducing enough livable-wage jobs to support the population they used to have. There's great housing stock and decent infrastructure and schools.

Will you also give millions to improve schools? Incentivize local people to start small businesses and help create jobs? What is your plan for the displaced people?

What’s stopping you? Sounds like a great idea.

At a minimum, advocate for the removal of vacant buildings. I know they have a robust program in W. Va. and the residents are grateful for the elimination of squatters/drug dens and preservation of what little property value they have left.

Very poor but dense area. I envision buying up entire neighborhoods for the purposes of income generation and raising the average income and eliminating litter. Dozens, if not hundreds of abandoned houses.

Not Philly or Pittsburgh.